1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an analog electronic timepiece that displays time and numerical values other than time.
2. Description of Related Art
A conventional electronic timepiece has a measuring unit, such as a temperature sensor or a barometric pressure sensor, and provides an analog representation of a measured value of a physical quantity using a hand. Separately from scales for time display, such an electronic timepiece has scales for displaying a measured value on a dial plate or on a bezel of a wrist timepiece, and drives one or more hands independently to point to the scales to indicate the measured value.
Some electronic timepiece having such a measurement function uses any of an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand, or a function hand to indicate which type of function the display of the electronic timepiece relates to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-226350 discloses a technology in which a second hand is extended in the direction opposite to a portion of the hand pointing to seconds, relative to a rotation axis. Further, scales to be indicated by the extended portion of the second hand are provided, which makes it possible to display operation information or status. According to this technology, information indicated by the scales can easily be read without increasing the number of hands.
In displaying a numerical value with an analog electronic timepiece, however, a range of numerical values and the number of significant digits for time display are often considerably different from those for other purposes. If various types of scales are provided on a dial plate or a bezel for various purposes, display is crowded. In addition, the range of numerical values is considerably different depending on a displayed item other than the time, such as, for example, temperature for which a value after the decimal point is displayed, and barometric pressure for which a value of 1,000 or greater is displayed. Using the same scales to display these different types of numerical values reduces readability of numerical values since scales are too rough or too fine depending on a displayed item. However, if different types of scales are provided for different types of numerical values to be displayed, a dial plate or a bezel is filled with scales.